This Is The Race

By Suzy Seeley

When she started running at the age of 35, Suzy Seeley never dreamed all the places running would take her. A busy mom with two young kids and an advertising business, Suzy had little time for herself. She picked up the hobby of running as a way to stay healthy, and almost three decades later, she has been around the world, earned two world records, and collected more than a few stories to tell about it.

An inspiration to everyone who knows her, Suzy's story will encourage anyone who reads it. Hers is a story of strength, resiliency, and grit with a huge side of humility.

"She can inspire women to do things they never thought they could do and then do it better than they ever thought they could do. To me that's what she represents. If you ever had a doubt in your mind, look at her, and if you ever put a limitation on what you thought you could do, look at her. " -Lisa Tilton, fellow runner

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098379063

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Copyright © 2021 by Suzy Seeley

This Is The Race

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage

and retrieval system now known or invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer

who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written

for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Print ISBN: 978-1-09837-905-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09837-906-3

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

In God’s Hands

Chapter 2

Running and Learning to Walk

Chapter 3

Food, Faith, Family & Fartleks

Chapter 4

Let’s Line Up and See What God Gives Us

Chapter 5

Blessings In Disguise

Chapter 6

You Can Do More Than You Think You Can

Conclusion

A Note of Special Thanks

From Those Who Know Her

Introduction

My favorite movie of all time is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. If you’ve never seen it, there is this great scene toward the middle of the movie where the main character, Walter, a timid photograph expert who works for Life magazine, is sitting at his dark desk depressingly located in the building’s basement. Walter, who processes the film negatives taken by photojournalists on their amazing adventures around the world, dreams of having his own great adventures, but never actually does anything about it.

As the scene continues, Walter imagines that a photograph of one the magazine’s most famous photojournalists is beckoning him into the photo, beckoning him into an adventure. In that one impulsive moment, Walter makes a decision. He picks up his briefcase, grabs his jacket and runs out the door toward his adventure. The scene continues as he walks through the offices of Life, past tall posters of previous magazine covers: a rocket ship bound for the moon, a world champion surfer in the eye of a monstrous wave, Muhammad Ali standing above his opponent after a knockout, JFK, MLK, and John Lennon. The final cover we see is of an astronaut, the face of which is superimposed with Walter’s own face, and the headline reads The Making of a Brave Man.

The movie uses a lot of word images to express the deeper points of the film. As Walter leaves the building, a large arrow and a picture of an airplane with the words To See The World are written across the pavement underneath his feet. At the airport and inside the plane, we see other messages written on walls and signs saying: Things Dangerous To Come, To See Behind Walls, To Draw Closer, To Find Each Other, and To Feel. Finally, as the plane lifts off, we see a shot of the runway and the message, That Is The Purpose of Life.

When Walter’s plane lands in Greenland (actually the movie was filmed in Reykjavik, Iceland) we know that his life will never be the same.

The first time I saw this movie, his courage hit me right in the heart. Even though Walter Mitty is a fictional character, I could identify with him. A quiet, shy person who dreamed of adventure but was too afraid to fly, to run, or to even take the first step towards adventure. He finally seized his opportunity, and he accepted an invitation to see the world, to live his full life.

The pivotal moment in my life was not quite so cinematic as Walter Mitty’s. I wasn’t working for Life magazine when my adventure began and my first flight did not take me to Reykjavik. But there came a moment in my life when I also had a choice to make, a time when I had to summon the courage to take a first step out of my very comfortable comfort zone. I also made it to Iceland, eventually. Actually, I’ve made it there twice, so far…

Chapter 1

In God’s Hands

In a lot of the ways that you measure life, I am a pretty average person. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1959, I grew up in Houston, the fourth and youngest child in a middle class family. I had two good parents, my mom stayed at home and my dad had a good job with Exxon. We lived on the west side of town and my siblings and I all attended our local public school.

I was a church girl. I mean, my dad was an elder at a large Presbyterian church, and on several committees, so we were there every single Sunday. I went to service on Sunday mornings, choir practice on Sunday afternoons, and youth group during the middle of the week. I really spent a lot of my time at church.

I never played sports of any kind. I wasn’t a cheerleader, I wasn’t on the drill team, I wasn’t in the band. I was always kind of an art nerd. I did well in most of my classes and had a reputation for being a teacher’s pet, mainly because I studied hard, but art class is where I really shined. There was never a question that I would go to college after graduating high school, it was just expected in my family. My parents were supportive and they didn’t have a fit when I said I wanted to major in art. It was the late ‘70s, so they probably thought college for me was just a bridge between their house and my husband’s house anyway.

College Life

I loved college and I loved my classes. I was accepted into University of Texas’s BFA program, and it was the first time I had lived away from my parents. I enjoyed the freedom to make my own choices about some things. Without Dad there to wake me up every Sunday, I stopped going to church. I didn’t really know how to go about finding a church in Austin anyway. But I was there to get a degree. I was still my high-achieving teacher’s pet self, and was determined to finish a five-year degree plan in only four years, so I didn’t exactly have a lot of extra time for church on my hands.

I was into photorealistic painting at the time, and threw myself into learning that articulate, controlled technique. One of my pieces, a painting of a camera, was selected for an art show in Austin and was so realistic looking that people at the show thought it was an actual camera attached to a canvas until they got close enough to see that it was just paint.

I had a great roommate, an athletic girl from Bellaire who had been on the swim team in high school, and she helped bring some balance to my life. Why don’t you take a break and come swim a few laps with me, she would often ask, and a couple of times I took her up on the offer. Of course, when she said a few laps she meant like fifty! But I enjoyed it, to my own surprise, and she even commented that I was a really good swimmer. Like any kid growing up in Texas, I was always around pools, and my family spent every opportunity we had, plus most of the summer at our house at Canyon Lake. When my brothers taught me how to ski, they told me there were six feet long underwater scorpions. So between that little vision and actually seeing cottonmouth water moccasins along the shores of the newly filled lake, and I was an endurance water skier from the first attempt.

I met a group of good friends and enjoyed my time in Austin. I dated some, but nothing really serious. I wasn’t actually interested in getting married right then. I was ready to make the transition from student to career. I loved the work I did at the UT art school and I excelled at the projects. I enjoyed creating art for art’s sake, but I knew that I would starve to death as a painter. So even though I majored in studio art, I minored in graphic art, knowing I had a much greater chance of getting paid to do graphic design than painting, no matter how realistic.

Right after graduation I got a job working for a printing firm in Austin, then a year later I moved back to Houston to work in the graphics department at Hermann Hospital. Houston was my home, and I was ready to get back.

When I returned, I quickly reconnected with a few friends I had gone to UT with, and they invited me over for dinner, just a small gathering. That’s where I met David. David had grown up in Tyler, had gone to UT the same time I did, and moved to Houston right after he graduated. We even knew a lot of the same people, but we had never met before that night. David and I were on the same bus route, we just weren’t on the same schedule, metaphorically speaking.

We dated a while, then we broke up, then we got back together, then we broke up again, but in spite of all that back and forth, it was pretty clear right from the start that David and I were good together. We were engaged only six months before we got married, just long enough to plan the big church wedding with a white dress and long veil that I had always imagined. I wanted to walk down that same beautiful aisle all my siblings had walked down, in the Presbyterian church where we had all grown up, surrounded by gorgeous stained glass windows and all of my friends and family. David was happy to have any kind of wedding that I wanted, and it really was a beautiful day.

Looking back, I can see how young we were, both just 25, but we had similar goals and similar work ethics and we thought we knew what we wanted out of life. We were great friends, enjoyed hanging out with each other, and loved each other deeply, but we also respected and appreciated the fact that we both had goals and interests outside of the marriage.

An opportunity opened at ComputerCraft, a company who sent technicians out to people’s homes to help them set up personal computers, printers, modems, and that sort of thing. The PC was really new back then, and no one was familiar with the cords or the hardware, so people needed professional help with the technical end of things. They offered me a position in their graphics department in southwest Houston and I grabbed it, this was a great opportunity in a growing field. David’s office was up in Conroe, so we split the difference and lived in an apartment in northwest Houston. Then we bought a little house in the area that we could barely afford. As it always happens with young career-focused professionals who also happen to be in love, I was pregnant by our first anniversary. I was curious why I was so nauseas when we were moving in.

Finding out we were going to have a baby was the happy surprise of 1985. The not-so-happy surprise of that year came when, halfway through my pregnancy, the company laid me off. ComputerCraft’s business model, as